by Callan Wink
“My mom isn’t here,” he said. “She’s staying over at her boyfriend’s house tonight.”
“Oh, I know. I talked to her this morning, actually. She seems happy with Art. It’s nice that she’s found someone that she can relate to. Apparently he’s really smart.”
August shrugged. “Kind of a hippie,” he said. He was trying to figure out why exactly Julie had knocked on the door if she knew his mother wasn’t there.
“Am I bothering you?” she said. “I don’t want to be a nuisance. It looks like you were getting relaxed.”
“I had a game tonight. I was just watching some TV. You’re not interrupting.”
“That’s right, your mom told me that you’ve turned into a jock.”
“I don’t know about that. I like football okay. How was Africa?”
Julie had opened the bag of chicken and was eating a drumstick. She sucked chicken grease from her fingers and leaned back on the couch, closing her eyes. “Botswana was…Botswana. I don’t even know where to start, really. There’s this saying Peace Corps people always use: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. You can get used to just about anything. That’s something I learned. What you think is normal can shift in much less time than you might think.”
“Makes sense. I think Ethan is up in Alaska, working on a pipeline. I haven’t seen him in a long time. The place was for sale, but the bank might own it now. I’m not sure.”
Julie drank more without opening her eyes. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got a job in New York that I’m starting after Christmas. I wasn’t going to be staying here anyways. Still, all those emails. I was telling him my thoughts, writing to him about how I was feeling and what I was seeing and he was sending me, I don’t know, fiction. That’s fucked up. You want some chicken?”
“Already ate. Thanks, though.”
“You want some champagne?”
He took the bottle and swigged, passing it back, fighting down a belch as the warm bubbles hit his gut. “Ethan told me a story one time about a dog his dad had. A real good bird dog for a couple years, and then all of a sudden it started licking its leg and couldn’t stop. It licked right down to the bone, stopped hunting, even, so his dad ended up shooting it. He told me his dad was a real asshole.”
“That’s a horrible story,” Julie said. “I’m not surprised. I met his father once. Maybe that’s just how it works. Everyone’s father is an asshole. Daughters shrink from it or rebel against it, but sons absorb it, pass it on to the next generation, ensuring that, outside of a certain amount of necessary biological attraction, men and women will continue to be incompatible. Just how tall are you, anyway? Your mom told me you’d sprung up.” Julie paused, smiling, and tilted the bottle toward him. “As I was walking tonight I realized how much I missed the dry air here. That’s something about Africa I never enjoyed, the humidity. In bed it always seemed like I was sweating. Do you want to go for a walk or something? It really is a beautiful evening. If you’re busy, I’ll take off and leave you alone.”
As she was talking she was moving closer to him on the couch. They were hip to hip now and he could smell her, fried chicken, champagne, a tendril of perfume. She had her hand on his arm. “Are those bruises?” she said. “You’re all banged up, aren’t you? Maybe we shouldn’t go for a walk.” And then she swung her leg over and she was straddling him. She pulled the top of her dress down and her breasts were loose, large and pale in his face. He put his mouth to her nipples, left then right; her fingers were raking his hair. He’d run out of ideas and wasn’t sure what to do next. Eventually she took his hands, placed them where she wanted them.
She stayed the whole night. They lay in the tangle of sheets, and in the morning he woke up to the shift of her weight leaving the mattress. He watched her slip her sundress back over her head, then come to sit next to him.
“I’m a mess,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. That was the first time for you, wasn’t it?”
For a moment August thought about lying but figured she already knew. “I guess,” he said.
Julie rubbed her eyes. “I was in a weird place last night. That was not rational thinking.”
August couldn’t think of anything to say. He had an image of her splayed on her back on the couch. I need your tongue right there, she’d said, hands on the back of his head, pushing him down. “In fact,” she continued, “not only was that ill-advised, but I think it was illegal. You’re in high school.”
“I’m a senior,” he said, realizing how stupid it sounded the moment it was uttered. He put his hand on her leg, tried to move it further up her thigh, but she shook her head and stood. “I’ve got to get going,” she said, shouldering her purse. “I’ll let myself out.” She didn’t move to leave, though. She was looking at him, a small smile threatening to emerge. Abruptly she reached and ripped the sheets off him. He lay naked while she appraised him seriously.
“You don’t have to go. My mom usually stays over in Bozeman until Sunday.”
At this Julie released a small squeal. “Your mom,” she said. “I can’t even think about her right now. I’m leaving. Bye.”
And then she was gone, and August lay there for a long time. Trying to remember everything exactly how it had happened. Panic setting in as he realized that some of the particulars were already starting to blur. Eventually he got up and ate three full bowls of cereal.
The next week at school his mind couldn’t stop returning to her, on the couch, on the bed, on the floor. That slightly terrifying low moan she’d made. When the bell rang, he’d have to carry his books in front to hide his erection. Football practice seemed interminable. He didn’t know when he was going to see her again, and this worried him almost as much as thinking about what he might say or do when he eventually did.
* * *
—
After practice on Wednesday he came home and she was in the kitchen talking with his mother, both of them holding glasses of wine. He was still in his football pants, sweat-soaked undershirt, and dirty socks. He said, “Hi, Julie,” and she said, “Hi, August.” Her look gave him absolutely nothing.
“We’re going to make a little chicken salad, Augie,” his mother said. “Hit the shower and then come eat with us.”
“Yeah, hit the shower, you stinky boy,” Julie said.
His face burned. He left the room.
At the dinner table he mumbled responses, picked at the salad, tried to catch her eye several times to no avail. She and his mother were laughing and chattering like usual, and he wanted to get up and leave, but he also found it very necessary to look at her. The fine hair on her arms caught the light when she picked up her wine. She had delicate ears, dry patches of skin at her elbows, a small, regular blue vein pulsing in the pit where her neck met her collarbone. When he said good night the women opened another bottle of wine and retired to the porch.
He went to bed, and at some point despair finally turned to sleep. Much later, when she woke him, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. She was slipping under the covers, kissing his chest, her hands cold at first and then warming. “I got a little too drunk to drive,” she whispered into his ear. “On purpose. So I’m sleeping in the spare bedroom right now.”
It was real. No dream. She was astride him, and it was the sound of it, the wet rhythmic beat that inflamed him maybe more than anything else. After dinner he’d convinced himself that the first time had only been her making a mistake. But now here she was, driving him into the mattress, breath coming in quick bursts, her hands clenching his, pinning them to the pillow above his head. Her breasts swung like pendulums, brushing his face, and he felt like laughing, a great feeling of relief. She’d come back and now he knew that this was going to continue in some way.
* * *
—
He became worthless to anything in the world that wasn’t her. He walked the hallways a
t school in a fog. Girls he’d formerly lusted after now looked like children. Their arms too thin, no hips, their stomachs not rounded enough, their breasts too small. Football was torture. The guys, the stupid locker-room pranks. The way they talked about the girls they knew, girls they’d like to know. You have no idea, he wanted to say. You idiots don’t even have the slightest idea what it can be like. He endured the days between Wednesdays and Fridays because he had to, but if there’d been some way to fast-forward through time, he’d have done it in a heartbeat, even if it meant his life was shortened exponentially. Most Wednesdays she’d come for dinner but not always, and the times she didn’t he was despondent.
“Your mom’s going to start thinking I’ve got a drinking problem,” she said one night as she hurried to undress at the side of his bed. “I can’t keep getting too drunk to drive. No more Wednesdays after this for a while.”
“But Friday, still? After my game?” He knew he sounded worried, but he couldn’t keep the notes of it out of his voice. She had him in her mouth now. She nodded yes. Instant relief. A whole week without her would be intolerable. Fridays were the best because they had the whole night, the whole house, and the morning, too. His mother was still coming to his games. Sometimes she brought Art along and they stood side by side on the bleachers, laughing and shouting along with the cheerleaders. Had it been his father in the stands with his mother there would have been no cheesy, excessive cheering. This observation seemed to bring to light some slippery truth about the underlying natures of both these partnerships, but it was hard to pin down, and mostly he tried to ignore his mother and focus on the game.
He hadn’t been playing well. Part of it was that his mind was elsewhere; part of it was the fact that his temples pounded every time he made hard contact. After that hit in Big Timber, it felt like something had come unattached in his brain. He knew that probably this wasn’t possible, but still, he started to hold back.
On Friday nights, after the game, the guys would try to get him to go to some bonfire or another and he would say maybe he’d show up, but he never did, and eventually they stopped asking. He would go home and take a shower, letting the hot water pummel whatever part of him hurt the most. After, he’d wait on the couch until she appeared. Sometimes she wanted to get right to it, sometimes she wanted to drink wine and talk first. He didn’t always enjoy the talking, and after half a glass of wine his tongue felt thick and slow. Of course, this had something to do with Julie herself. She tended to speak in paragraphs. He was constantly on edge, trying not to say anything that might give him away. She liked discussing politics, and his basic strategy was to agree with everything she said.
Once, while walking around the living room, wineglass in hand, rattling off a list of American atrocities committed in the Middle East, she’d stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence. She shook her head as if coming out of a reverie. She finished her wine in one gulp, then pulled her shirt over her head and slid her leggings off so she was standing in her bra and panties, her thighs goose-fleshed. “I sometimes forget that you’re seventeen,” she’d said, crossing to him. “I need to keep this grounded in some sort of reality.”
She liked certain things that he would have never considered. She moved his wrist so his hand was around her throat. “Squeeze,” she said, grabbing his hair and pulling his head down to where he could use his tongue. “Harder.”
“You actually like that?” he said afterward.
She laughed. “Wasn’t it obvious?”
“I guess. I don’t get it.”
* * *
—
Most Fridays she came by, but on several occasions she didn’t. These nights he lay awake until the early hours, half hoping she’d still show, imagining in searing detail all the possible things she might be doing instead and with whom.
* * *
—
Julie worried constantly that his mother would find them out. “Your mother is one of my very good friends,” she said. “I feel like I’m stealing.”
“How would she find out?” he said. “There’s no way.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I kind of feel like she already thinks something is up.”
“What do you mean? I hardly even look at you when you come over for dinner anymore.”
“Exactly. You stumble around like a dork. At this point I think she just thinks you have a crush on me, and that’s okay. She can’t find out, though. I would die.”
* * *
—
Julie was moving to New York at the end of November and it was already mid-October. He was agitated and restless when he wasn’t with her, and even when he was with her, he wasn’t comfortable. He’d counted the nights they had left, and the number was piercingly small. Now she talked excitedly about her new job, the apartment she was hoping to get in Brooklyn. All the kinds of food she was going to eat when she finally got to the city. He tried not to mope. He tried to be noncommittal. He now knew exactly when she was almost there. He’d tighten his grip and her face would go an unattractive mottled red and she’d wheeze, her eyes wide open but somewhere far away.
* * *
—
They played Ennis. A home game, an unseasonably warm night. August battled with the Ennis end all game. He was huge, six six at least and not skinny, either. The rumor was that he’d had offers from D-1 teams, and all night he thwarted August’s efforts to penetrate the line. Late in the third quarter the fullback broke through a hole and sprinted down the left sideline for a touchdown. August, away from the play, saw the giant end loping down the field, already celebrating his team’s score. August had the angle. He came from ten yards away and blindsided him, sending him sprawling into the bench on his team’s sideline.
There was a whistle. August got an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Coach Zwicky pulled him off the field. Grabbed him by the face mask. “I appreciate the energy,” he said. “But that’s not how we do things here and you know it, son. Go back in the next series and do it the right way.”
August went back in and the Ennis tight end owned him for the rest of the game. The guy was huge, and now he was pissed off. Afterward, August sat in the locker room taking his pads off slowly, the stiffness already coming on. He felt like he’d been trampled by an angry crowd.
That night Julie came over. When he was on top of her he felt an extra slickness: a coppery smell filled the room. She was on her period, and as he looked down he saw the sides of her thighs were smeared with it. “Is it okay?” he said, slowing, causing her to clench her legs, her heels hooking around his buttocks, drawing him deeper. “If you stop now I’m going to kill you,” she said. Afterward they took a shower and did it again, standing, the water running pink down the drain. They threw the sheets on the floor and slept rolled up in the comforter. And that was the last time.
In the morning, Julie left early, as she normally did. August ate half a box of cereal and watched some TV. He was coming down the stairs, heading to the laundry room with his arms full of blood-stained bedding, when his mother came through the door. He tried to turn but there was no way to hide it. “Jesus,” she said. “What happened on your bed?”
He could think of nothing immediately. “I cut myself,” he said finally. He walked past her to the laundry room and he could feel her watching him. He started the machine, and when he came out to the kitchen she was sitting at the table, arms crossed over her chest.
“Kind of a cheap shot you gave that guy last night,” she said.
August shrugged. “The guy was a giant. I couldn’t do anything with him. I thought I might shake him up. Didn’t work. You saw it. He kicked my ass for the rest of the game, so he got the last laugh, I guess.”
“Okay,” his mother said. “Fair enough. Where’d you cut yourself?” She was staring at him. Unblinking. He went to the sink for a glass of water to break her gaze. He looked out the window and dr
ained his glass. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Not a big deal.”
“You didn’t cut yourself.”
“I did, actually.”
“I know exactly what it was on those sheets. You can’t even look at me.”
“It’s really none of your business. Live your life. I’m doing fine in mine.”
“This can’t continue,” she said. “I will be calling her.”
“Calling who? Okay, so what? I had a girl over last night. It’s someone from school. We hang out occasionally. It’s life. People have sex.”
“It is life, you’re exactly right. And if I thought it was someone from school I wouldn’t be all that concerned, or even surprised. But I know damn well who it is, so we can just stop pretending. Listen, Augie, I’m not mad at you at all. You’ve done what probably every seventeen-year-old boy in the world would do if given the chance. The problem is not you. The problem is her. She’s closer to thirty than she is twenty. She does not need to be messing around with high schoolers. Not my son, anyway. You’re not playing on the same level. You may think you are, but you’re not. Trust me.”
“What? You mean, you think it was Julie? Is that what you’re saying? You’re crazy.”
“Stop it.” She stood, came to him, reaching for his hand. Her voice was soft now. “I’m not mad. I love you more than anything, and that’s why I have to step in here. It’s not right. It just really isn’t. Not her with you. It will only end one way.”
